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LITERATURE IN ENGLISH
Paper 3 Poetry and Prose
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UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE INTERNATIONAL EXAMINATIONS
General Certificate of Education
Advanced Subsidiary Level and Advanced Level
October/November 2007
2 hours
Additional Materials:
Answer Booklet/Paper
*6462033505*
READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST
If you have been given an Answer Booklet, follow the instructions on the front cover of the Booklet.
Write your Centre number, candidate number and name on all the work you hand in.
Write in dark blue or black pen.
Do not use staples, paper clips, highlighters, glue or correction fluid.
Answer one question from Section A and one question from Section B.
At the end of the examination, fasten all your work securely together.
All questions carry equal marks.
You are reminded of the need for good English and clear presentation in your answers.
This document consists of 10 printed pages and 2 blank pages.
SP (SLM) T34857/1
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Section A: Poetry
JOHN KEATS : Selected Poems
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Either
(a) According to Keats, ‘human passion … leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d.’
With reference to two poems, discuss ways in which Keats presents love.
Or
(b) Comment closely on the following poem, saying in what ways it is characteristic of
Keats’s poetry.
Ode on Melancholy
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No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss’d
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.
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But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.
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She dwells with Beauty – Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
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Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.
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Songs of Ourselves (Section 4)
2
Either
(a) ‘But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.’
Compare ways in which the poets present the difficulties of human life in two poems
in Section 4.
Or
(b) Discuss in detail the following poem, commenting in particular on its presentation of
the narrator’s response to the snake.
Hunting Snake
Sun-warmed in this late season’s grace
under the autumn’s gentlest sky
we walked, and froze half-through a pace.
The great black snake went reeling by.
Head-down, tongue flickering on the trail
he quested through the parting grass;
sun glazed his curves of diamond scale,
and we lost breath to watch him pass.
What track he followed, what small food
fled living from his fierce intent,
we scarcely thought; still as we stood
our eyes went with him as he went.
Cold, dark and splendid he was gone
into the grass that hid his prey.
We took a deeper breath of day,
looked at each other, and went on.
Judith Wright
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STEVIE SMITH : Selected Poems
3
Either
(a) ‘Shun compromise
Forget him and forget her.’
Discuss the ways in which Smith presents human relationships in two or three
poems from your selection.
Or
(b) Comment closely on the following poem, comparing the presentation of religious
faith here and in one other poem from your selection.
Egocentric
What care I if good God be
If he be not good to me,
If he will not hear my cry
Nor heed my melancholy midnight sigh?
What care I if he created Lamb,
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And golden Lion, and mud-delighting Clam,
And Tiger stepping out on padded toe,
And the fecund earth the Blindworms know?
He made the Sun, the Moon and every Star,
He made the infant Owl and the Baboon,
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He made the ruby-orbed Pelican,
He made all silent inhumanity,
Nescient and quiescent to his will,
Unquickened by the questing conscious flame
That is my glory and my bitter bane.
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What care I if Skies are blue,
If God created Gnat and Gnu,
What care I if good God be
If he be not good to me?
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Section B: Prose
CHINUA ACHEBE : Anthills of the Savannah
4
Either
(a) What effects do you think Achebe achieves by using different narrators in the course
of the novel?
Or
(b) Discuss the following passage in detail, commenting on the significance of the
naming ceremony in the novel.
She picked up the tiny bundle from its cot and, turning to Elewa, said: ‘Name
this child.’
‘Na you go name am.’
‘OK. You just saved a false step, anyway. Thanks. I will start afresh … There
was an Old Testament prophet who named his son The-remnant-shall-return. They
must have lived in times like this. We have a different metaphor, though; we have
our own version of hope that springs eternal. We shall call this child AMAECHINA:
May-the-path-never-close. Ama for short.’
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‘But that’s a boy’s name.’
‘No matter.’
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‘Girl fit answer am also.’
‘It’s a beautiful name. The Path of Ikem.’
‘That’s right. May it never close, never overgrow.’
‘Das right!’
‘May it always shine! The Shining Path of Ikem.’
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‘Dat na wonderful name.’
‘Na fine name so.’
‘In our traditional society,’ resumed Beatrice, ‘the father named the child. But
the man who should have done it today is absent … Stop that sniffling, Elewa! The
man is not here although I know he is floating around us now, watching with that 20
small-boy smile of his. I am used to teasing him and will tease him now. What does a
man know about a child anyway that he should presume to give it a name …’
‘Nothing except that his wife told him he is the father,’ said Abdul, causing much
laughter.
‘Na true my brother,’ said Braimoh. ‘Na woman de come tell man say na him 25
born the child. Then the man begin make inyanga and begin answer father. Na yéyé
father we be.’
‘Exactly. So I think our tradition is faulty there. It is really safest to ask the mother
what her child is or means or should be called. So Elewa should really be holding
Ama and telling us what she is. What it was like to be loved by that beautiful man 30
Ikem. But Elewa is too shy. Look at her!’
‘I no shy at all,’ she replied, her eyes smiling and holding back tears at the same
time like bright sunshine through a thin drizzle. ‘I no shy but I no sabi book.’
‘Dis no be book matter, my sister.’
‘You no sabi book but you sabi plenty thing wey pass book, my dear girl.’
‘Say that again,’ said Emmanuel.
‘I concur,’ said Captain Medani.
‘Dat na true word,’ said Braimoh.
‘I tell you!’ said Aina.
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‘All of we,’ continued Beatrice, ‘done see baad time; but na you one, Elewa, 40
come produce something wonderful like this to show your sufferhead. Something
alive and kicking.’
‘That’s true. Very true,’ said the Captain.
‘But living ideas …’ Emmanuel began haltingly.
‘Ideas cannot live outside people,’ said Beatrice rather peremptorily stopping 45
him in mid-stride. He obeyed for a second, scratched his head and came right back
blurting defiantly:
‘I don’t accept that. The ideas in one lecture by Ikem changed my entire life
from a parrot to a man.’
‘Really?’
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‘Yes, really. And the lives of some of my friends. It wasn’t Ikem the man who
changed me. I hardly knew him. It was his ideas set down on paper. One idea
in particular: that we may accept a limitation on our actions but never, under no
circumstances, must we accept restriction on our thinking.’
‘OK,’ said Beatrice bowing to this superior, unstoppable passion. ‘I have also felt 55
what you are saying, though I knew him too as a man. You win! People and Ideas,
then. We shall drink to both of them.’
Chapter 18
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GEORGE ELIOT : The Mill on the Floss
5
Either
(a) ‘You struggled with your feelings, you say. Yes! I have had feelings to struggle with;
but I conquered them. I have had a harder life than you have had; but I have found
my comfort in doing my duty.’ (Book VII Chapter 1)
How far does the novel lead you to sympathise with Tom’s speech to Maggie?
Or
(b) Discuss the following passage in detail, commenting in particular on the presentation
of Lucy and Stephen and the relationship between them.
The well-furnished drawing-room, with the open grand piano, and the pleasant
outlook down a sloping garden to a boat-house by the side of the Floss, is
Mr Deane’s. The neat little lady in mourning, whose light-brown ringlets are falling
over the coloured embroidery with which her fingers are busy, is of course Lucy
Deane; and the fine young man who is leaning down from his chair to snap the
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scissors in the extremely abbreviated face of the ‘King Charles’ lying on the young
lady’s feet is no other than Mr Stephen Guest, whose diamond ring, attar of roses,
and air of nonchalant leisure, at twelve o’clock in the day, are the graceful and
odoriferous result of the largest oil-mill and the most extensive wharf in St Ogg’s.
There is an apparent triviality in the action with the scissors, but your discernment 10
perceives at once that there is a design in it which makes it eminently worthy of a
large-headed, long-limbed young man; for you see that Lucy wants the scissors,
and is compelled, reluctant as she may be, to shake her ringlets back, raise her soft
hazel eyes, smile playfully down on the face that is so very nearly on a level with her
knee, and holding out her little shell-pink palm, to say, –
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‘My scissors, please, if you can renounce the great pleasure of persecuting my
poor Minny.’
The foolish scissors have slipped too far over the knuckles, it seems, and
Hercules holds out his entrapped fingers hopelessly.
‘Confound the scissors! The oval lies the wrong way. Please, draw them off for 20
me.’
‘Draw them off with your other hand,’ says Miss Lucy, roguishly.
‘Oh, but that’s my left hand: I’m not left-handed.’
Lucy laughs, and the scissors are drawn off with gentle touches from tiny
tips, which naturally disposes Mr Stephen for a repetition da capo. Accordingly, he 25
watches for the release of the scissors, that he may get them into his possession
again.
‘No, no,’ said Lucy, sticking them in her band, ‘you shall not have my scissors
again – you have strained them already. Now don’t set Minny growling again. Sit up
and behave properly, and then I will tell you some news.’
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‘What is that?’ said Stephen, throwing himself back and hanging his right arm
over the corner of his chair. He might have been sitting for his portrait, which would
have represented a rather striking young man of five-and-twenty, with a square
forehead, short dark-brown hair, standing erect, with a slight wave at the end, like
a thick crop of corn, and a half-ardent, half-sarcastic glance from under his well- 35
marked horizontal eyebrows. ‘Is it very important news?’
‘Yes – very. Guess.’
‘You are going to change Minny’s diet, and give him three ratafias soaked in a
dessert-spoonful of cream daily?’
‘Quite wrong.’
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‘Well, then, Dr Kenn has been preaching against buckram, and you ladies have
all been sending him a round-robin, saying – “This is a hard doctrine; who can bear
it?’’ ’
‘For shame!’ said Lucy, adjusting her little mouth gravely. ‘It is rather dull of you
not to guess my news, because it is about something I mentioned to you not very 45
long ago.’
‘But you have mentioned many things to me not long ago. Does your feminine
tyranny require that when you say the thing you mean is one of several things,
I should know it immediately by that mark?’
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‘Yes, I know you think I am silly.’
‘I think you are perfectly charming.’
‘And my silliness is part of my charm?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘But I know you like women to be rather insipid. Philip Wakem betrayed you:
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he said so one day when you were not here.’
Book VI Chapter 1
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KATHERINE MANSFIELD : Short Stories
6
Either
(a) ‘Underneath the surface, there is often violence in Mansfield’s stories.’
Discuss the effects of two stories in the light of this comment.
Or
(b) Comment closely on the following passage, discussing in particular the ways in
which Mansfield presents the women here.
It was over at last. And: ‘Come and see my new coffee machine,’ said Bertha.
‘We only have a new coffee machine once a fortnight,’ said Harry. Face took her
arm this time; Miss Fulton bent her head and followed after.
The fire had died down in the drawing-room to a red, flickering ‘nest of baby
phoenixes’, said Face.
5
‘Don’t turn up the light for a moment. It is so lovely.’ And down she crouched by
the fire again. She was always cold … ‘without her little red flannel jacket, of course,’
thought Bertha.
At that moment Miss Fulton ‘gave the sign’.
‘Have you a garden?’ said the cool, sleepy voice.
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This was so exquisite on her part that all Bertha could do was to obey. She
crossed the room, pulled the curtains apart, and opened those long windows.
‘There!’ she breathed.
And the two women stood side by side looking at the slender, flowering tree.
Although it was so still it seemed, like the flame of a candle, to stretch up, to point, to 15
quiver in the bright air, to grow taller and taller as they gazed – almost to touch the
rim of the round, silver moon.
How long did they stand there? Both, as it were, caught in that circle of unearthly
light, understanding each other perfectly, creatures of another world, and wondering
what they were to do in this one with all this blissful treasure that burned in their 20
bosoms and dropped, in silver flowers, from their hair and hands?
For ever – for a moment? And did Miss Fulton murmur: ‘Yes. Just that.’ Or did
Bertha dream it?
Then the light was snapped on and Face made the coffee and Harry said:
‘My dear Mrs Knight, don’t ask me about my baby. I never see her. I shan’t feel 25
the slightest interest in her until she has a lover,’ and Mug took his eye out of the
conservatory for a moment and then put it under glass again and Eddie Warren
drank his coffee and set down the cup with a face of anguish as though he had
drunk and seen the spider.
‘What I want to do is to give the young men a show. I believe London is simply 30
teeming with first-chop, unwritten plays. What I want to say to ’em is: “Here’s the
theatre. Fire ahead.”’
‘You know, my dear, I am going to decorate a room for the Jacob Nathans. Oh,
I am so tempted to do a fried-fish scheme, with the backs of the chairs shaped like
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frying-pans and lovely chip potatoes embroidered all over the curtains.’
‘The trouble with our young writing men is that they are still too romantic. You
can’t put out to sea without being seasick and wanting a basin. Well, why won’t they
have the courage of those basins?’
‘A dreadful poem about a girl who was violated by a beggar without a nose in a
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lit-tle wood …’
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Miss Fulton sank into the lowest, deepest chair and Harry handed round the
cigarettes.
From the way he stood in front of her shaking the silver box and saying abruptly:
‘Egyptian? Turkish? Virginian? They’re all mixed up,’ Bertha realised that she not
only bored him; he really disliked her. And she decided from the way Miss Fulton 45
said: ‘No, thank you, I won’t smoke,’ that she felt it, too, and was hurt.
‘Oh, Harry, don’t dislike her. You are quite wrong about her. She’s wonderful,
wonderful. And, besides, how can you feel so differently about someone who means
so much to me. I shall try to tell you when we are in bed tonight what has been
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happening. What she and I have shared.’
Bliss
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Copyright Acknowledgements:
Question 2
Question 3
Question 4
© Judith Wright; ‘Hunting Snake’; Songs of Ourselves, Foundation Books; 2005.
© Estate of James MacGibbon.
From ANTHILLS OF THE SAVANNAH by Chinua Achebe, copyright © 1987 by Chinua Achebe. Used by permission of Doubleday, a
division of Random House, Inc.
Permission to reproduce items where third-party owned material protected by copyright is included has been sought and cleared where possible. Every
reasonable effort has been made by the publisher (UCLES) to trace copyright holders, but if any items requiring clearance have unwittingly been included, the
publisher will be pleased to make amends at the earliest possible opportunity.
University of Cambridge International Examinations is part of the Cambridge Assessment Group. Cambridge Assessment is the brand name of University of
Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (UCLES), which is itself a department of the University of Cambridge.
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